


Learn How to Toughen Up

by hotguyhawkeye



Series: Reader/Peter: Better Together [4]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Cliffhanger, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Reader-Insert, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 18:50:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11606781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotguyhawkeye/pseuds/hotguyhawkeye
Summary: Peter and Ned ghost you on a day you're supposed to have really epic plans, and you wind up turning to your new friend MJ for comfort.





	Learn How to Toughen Up

**Author's Note:**

> There is not a happy ending to this fic, but that doesn't mean there won't be an eventual happy ending to this series! What's a high-school romance without a few misunderstandings and angst, after all?

Joining decathlon turns out to be less stressful than you anticipated, even though it puts you in close proximity to Flash more often than any human being should ever be comfortable with. It's surprisingly fun, realizing there's a purpose for all of the seemingly unnecessary knowledge you've stored away over the years, and there's a bizarre rush that comes with being the first one to slam your hand down on the bell to answer the question. Aside from Flash, you become pretty decent friends with your other teammates – Cindy even starts to invite you, Peter, and Ned to her parties.

You don’t attend, of course, but the sentiment is nice nonetheless. MJ tells you about her hobby of sketching people in detention every day, and invites you along with her – this offer you do take up, and you sit behind her braiding her hair as she sketches a truly tragic picture of Flash moping in the corner. For the first time since you moved, you have _friends_. Plural. (More than just Ned and Peter, who you still think are something of a fluke, as they’re so sweet practically anyone becomes their friend once they spend any amount of time together.)

Of course, everything going so well means that _something_ has to go wrong at some point, doesn’t it? For a couple of weeks, you manage to fight the sinking feeling that something is going to happen and ruin your unexpected bout of happiness; you spend your time split between decathlon, detention with MJ, and movie nights at yours, Peter’s, or Ned’s apartments. Weekends see you and one or both of the boys just wandering around the city aimlessly, often with them showing you their favorite haunts.

* * *

You’d let slip one night, while watching _Rent_ that you haven’t even been near some of the areas of NYC depicted in the film.

”Wait, what do you mean you’ve never seen the city?” Ned asks incredulously. “You _live_ in the city!”

You laugh, and shrug helplessly. “I dunno, I just sort of stuck to home. It’s sort of overwhelming, isn’t it? I mean, I came from a small town before this. The street names were pretty much just the alphabet and then numbered up to like, ten.”

Peter tilts his head back from where he’s sitting on the floor, letting it rest on the edge of the bed so that he’s looking up at you. “Okay, new weekend plan,” he says, a smile spreading slowly across his face. “Me and Ned are going to give you an unofficial tour of New York. Every weekend you’ll pick a thing, like food, or art, or whatever, and we’ll take you somewhere you’ve never been that has that thing.”

You can’t help but grin back at him, and you lean over to press a fond kiss to his forehead before pushing his head off the bed. “Fine,” you concede, “ _but_ you guys had better not get me lost on any subways, okay? That is literally my freaking nightmare.”

Ned looks at Peter for a long moment, as if contemplating, and then they both turn to look at you. “Deal,” they say in unison.

* * *

This weekend, you had decided you wanted to go somewhere that fit the settings of _comfortable, good food,_ and _outdoorsy._ It was Peter’s turn to choose, and going by the texts in the group chat, he was incredibly excited about it. He was supposed to come meet you at your place, and then you’d take the subway to Ned’s together, and as a group, you were to head to wherever the destination was. Peter told you to be ready by eleven, and you’d be sure to have enough time to do everything he wanted to introduce you to, so, truthfully, you were ready no later than nine. Which, of course, meant you were pacing the apartment and bothering your siblings to no end with your antsy behavior. Come 10:50, you were glued to the window, keeping an eye out for the familiar mop of brown hair coming from the direction you knew Peter’s apartment to be in.

You sat, and waited, and stared, and rapped your fingers on the window sill; ten o’clock rolled around, and you started to get nervous. The feeling that something would go wrong – the feeling you’d been fighting off for weeks – started to creep back in. You could feel your hands going clammy, and you weren’t quite sure why this felt like the moment things were going to fall apart. Until you looked at the clock again, and saw that Peter was now twenty minutes late. You pulled out your phone and sent a text to Peter outside of the group chat, asking if he was nearby yet. Your phone showed the text as delivered and read, but those three little dots implying he was responding never popped up. Giving him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he was just running late and didn’t respond so he could finish getting ready, you put your phone down and went back to your obsessive window-watching.

Another twenty minutes passed, and still no sight of Peter, nor a response to your text. After debating internally for a further ten minutes, you decided to try texting Ned to see if he knew what was up. Unlike Peter, though, Ned didn’t have read receipts turned on on his phone, so though you knew the message was delivered, you had no way of knowing if he’d actually read it, and so you couldn’t try and gauge whether you were being ignored or not. Eventually, noon rolled around, and you decided they weren’t coming, for whatever reason. You tried to not take it personally, but it was the first time they had ever let you down, and it was crushing. Especially because it was Peter’s day, and he not only knew how you felt about finally having real friends, but also because you knew you were starting to fall for him. You had tried to stave off the feelings, something telling you it was a bad idea to fall in love with one of your only two good friends, and now you couldn’t help but feel vindicated in that hesitancy – even if you’d failed to stop yourself falling. 

Around 1:30, you texted Michelle and asked if she was free; she replied immediately that she was, and that she was out near your apartment and could come meet you if you wanted to come back home with her for a sleepover; you had complained to her once before about how, despite loving your siblings, they could sometimes be grating and demanding. You texted her back that that was an _excellent_ plan, and you’d be ready in the next five minutes, giving her time to head over. She was at your door in three, and you ducked into your closet pretending to dig for a blouse to hide the fact that your eyes had filled with tears – at least _one_ of your friends had kept their word today.

The walk to her house was quiet, but not uncomfortably so, and once you got to her place the two of you started gossiping about your decathlon teammates, about Flash and his supposed latest girlfriend, about which teachers you thought had the saddest lives outside of school; eventually, she asked what prompted your text, since you had only ever hung out outside of decathlon or detention once before now. You sighed heavily and explained what you usually did on Saturday afternoons, and how both Ned and Peter seemed to be ignoring you today for absolutely no reason – or at least no reason that you could think of.

Michelle frowned, and hesitated, like she was fighting with herself over whether she should say something. Eventually, she decided she should, and her face had a pinched look to it, like she felt bad about whatever she was going to say. “Look, I know you didn’t really spend time with anyone before that day you told Flash off, but, Peter…he has this habit of disappearing. Like, one second he’s there, next second he’s just straight gone. Nobody really knows why, but like, half the time he vanishes, so does Ned. Or Ned is found doing something really suspicious. I can’t tell you why or what they’re doing, but this is something they do sometimes.”

You find yourself torn between frowning deeper and feeling relieved – on the one hand, it doesn’t seem like they’re doing this purposely to you to try to hurt your feelings, but on the other hand, your feelings are hurt regardless. Michelle seems to sense your struggle, and claps a hand on your shoulder almost painfully. “Wanna go to Cindy’s party tonight and sit in the corner and talk shit about everyone making fools of themselves?” she asks with a wicked grin. You nod, and she cackles excitedly, jumping up to look for some lackluster outfits for you guys to wear so you’ll blend into the background more easily once people forget you’re there.

* * *

Around eight, MJ’s parents drop the two of you off at Cindy’s, and within less than six minutes of entering the party, the two of you have already set up camp in a far off corner, watching everyone in judgmental silence. You laugh at Flash’s terrible DJ skills, and at various classmates’ poor dancing; at one point, you share grimaces as you see a clearly drunken Flash try – and fail – to hit on Cindy…in front of her boyfriend. As it explodes into a fight, you and MJ slip outside, breathless with laughter, and start walking toward the diner around the corner as she texts her mom for a ride back home.

When you get back to MJ’s, you plug your phone in, waiting for it to turn back on, as it had died at some point during the party. When it does, approximately fifty texts come in all at once, a few from Ned and most of them from Peter. They’re all varying forms of apology, and Peter’s increase in urgency as it becomes clear to him that you’re either not getting the messages or willfully ignoring them. Tears prick at the corner of your eyes as you read through them, and you can’t tell if you’re feeling comforted by his apology, or upset that these texts are reminding you of how shitty you felt earlier; your high from laughing at everyone during the party and eating late-night pancakes at the diner is now faded, and you lie on your back on the floor trying to cling to the joy you had felt just ten minutes ago.

Again, sensing your distress, MJ pulls you up off the floor and insists you share her bed; you lie side-by-side on your backs, and she kindly pretends she can’t hear you trying not to cry.

”Do you want to talk about it?” she asks softly. “I mean, I’m not really good with anything but sarcasm, but. If you wanted to. We can.”

”I feel like I can’t breathe,” you whisper. “I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s like…I knew something like this would happen and this would be how I’d feel. Because this always happens to me when I think I’ve finally made really good friends. I either get pushed away or forgotten, and I got my hopes up here because they seemed different.”

Michelle reaches her hand over and holds onto yours. “I know the feeling. I didn’t really have any friends until the decathlon trip to DC, and I wouldn’t have any if it weren’t for Liz insisting we sneak into the pool that night. And I keep myself distant still because it’s like. These people don’t really know me, do they? They have no reason to keep me around so it’s like, I might as well not get attached.”

You laugh humorlessly and turn your head toward her. “I wish I knew how to not get attached. Instead, I went and stuck myself to them like a goddamn octopus, made the idiot mistake of falling for Peter, and –“

MJ sits up sharply and leans over you. “Hold up, you what? Did you just say you’re falling for Peter?”

You shrug sheepishly and laugh again, this time sounding more like a sob. “I never stood a chance, did I?”

Michelle looks like she wants to be comforting but isn’t sure exactly how to do it, so she just awkwardly pats the top of your head. “Listen, if Peter can’t see how great you are and this is one-sided, he’s a moron. If you guys _do_ get together, he still doesn’t deserve you, honestly. Point is, they’re both stupid boys, and by that logic we are obviously superior.”

That draws a genuine laugh from you, and she flops back down to your side. “Lets get some shut-eye now, and then tomorrow I can tell you every embarrassing story I have about those two idiots so you can feel better about yourself, okay?”

”Okay.”

* * *

You spend most of your Sunday at MJ’s as well, heading home around four in the afternoon, and you feel infinitely better by the time you get home. That is, until you walk in the front door and see Peter sitting on the couch looking forlorn before he glances up and sees you. His face flits between a million different emotions before falling on remorse, and he hesitantly takes a step toward you. When you take a half-step back, he freezes in place.

”I am so, so sorry,” he says, his voice cracking on the last word. “Please, can we…can we talk?”

You remember what MJ told you about them not deserving you and allow it to embolden you. “I’ve actually got some homework I need to get done, Peter, can it wait until tomorrow?” You pray your voice sounds as casual as you were aiming for, and from the crestfallen look on his face, you succeeded.

”Oh,” Peter says softly. “Okay. Yeah, I…okay.” He moves toward you, since you’re by the door, and makes an aborted motion like he was going to hug you, but you simply open the door for him and step to the side. At the last second, you lock eyes with him, and you can see how awful he feels; it nearly breaks you. _Nearly._ “I guess I’ll see you in second period then,” he mumbles as he heads out.

You head to your room feeling awful, and flop onto your bed face-first before pulling out your phone to tell MJ what happened. She texts you back a slew of emojis that you interpret to mean you did the right thing, even though it feels like absolute shit.

_At the very least_ , you tell yourself, _you’ve finally got a handle on that growing crush on Peter…_

**Author's Note:**

> The longest one in the series so far as an apology for taking so long to get something new up! Truthfully, I can't say for sure when the next piece will be up since my brain decided to throw this wrench in the game and now I once again find myself trying to figure out where things go from here! Please, let me know your thoughts on this installment, and do tell me if you actually want me to continue or not! Thanks again for all your support!


End file.
